Fennel

Introduction

Fennel is a lightweight CardDAV / CalDAV server. It is completely written in JavaScript and runs within a Node.js instance.
It does have some dependencies regarding JavaScript libraries, but all of these can be installed with the help of the npm.

If you are looking for a lightweight CalDAV / CardDAV, Fennel might be for you:

authentication is meant to be pluggable. While we concentrate on CourierAuth, you can add whatever can check a
username and password.

the data storage backend is meant to be pluggable as well. While we start with SQLite3, we do use an ORM. Whatever
database can be used with Sequelize can be used as storage backend for Fennel. You just have to change the setting
accordingly.

instead of inventing the wheel, we prefer to use some of those fine node.js based libraries.

and after all, Fennel is OSS and is written in JavaScript. Whatever you do not like, you are free to replace / rewrite.

Status

Fennel is beta software and should be handled as such:

The CalDAV part is mostly done and now ready for a first public beta.

The CardDAV part is running and now ready for a first public beta as well.

Fennel is tested on Calendar on iOS > v7.0 and on
OSX Calendar. If you run Fennel with another client your mileage may vary. Mozilla Lightning - as example - still
refuses to communicate with Fennel.

What's missing:

password checks (while you can have multiple users, they are not really authenticated and accept all passwords)

different clients (we will somewhen test with other clients, but we did not do thoroughly yet)

Installation

First of all, you need a Node.js installation.

On Debian

apt-get install nodejs

On OSX with brew

brew install nodejs

Go into the directory where you want to run your copy of Fennel and install with the help of npm.

cd /the/directory/with/fennel
npm install fennel@beta
nodemon server

Thats it, your instance of fennel should run now. All logs are sent to stdout for now. Have a look at /libs/log.js if
you want to change the options.

Configuration

All parameters which can be configured right now are in the file config.js. There are not much parameters yet, indeed.
But Fennel is not ready production anyway. And you are welcome to help out in adding parameters and configuration
options.

How to run

Point your CalDAV and CardDAV client to the root of Fennel. All the rest should be managed by Fennel via
./well-known URLs and the chat between your client and Fennel.

Contribution

If you happen to know how to write JavaScript, documentation or can help out with something else, drop us a note at contact at swordlord dot com. As more
helping hands we have, as quicker this server gets up and feature complete.

Dependencies

For now, have a look at the package.json file.

License

Fennel is published under the GNU General Public Licence version 3. See the LICENCE file for details.